Friday, 21 August 2009

When the Washington Nationals' Jordan Zimmermann was diagnosed as needing Tommy John surgery, I possibly took it more philosophically than otherbloggers.

I dealt with Zimmermann's PECOTA comparables before. Two of the three didn't have particularly long careers, and the third, John Maine, is by no means a stud. His ERA+ has been in decline since 2006, and his K/9 since 2007. I suspect he'll join Erik Hanson and Bobby Jones on their career paths, not getting much past 30.

Thursday, 20 August 2009

I understand that part of the half-year delay in removing that tag must be laid at the feet of Major League Baseball, who insisted on a minority candidate being interviewed. It's at times like that when I wonder whether the owners should think a little more carefully before handing more power to the commissioner's office. To fix any issues about minority representation, it would be better to force the interviews at the stage when Assistant GMs are appointed, and that's something better administered at the League level, not at the Commissioner level.

Rizzo clearly has a sort of organizational philosophy - groundball pitchers, guys who don't make trouble (Dukes' days are numbered, I suspect) and, it appears, a tendency to prefer bats over fielding (which sits oddly with the groundball pitching philosophy). Realistically, we ought to recognize that we're stuck with him and any of his shortcomings for four or five years. Let's just hope those shortcomings don't get in the way of playoff contention.

Tuesday, 18 August 2009

Here's the latest fielding statistics for Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) and Revised Zone Rating (RZR), as I've been keeping them throughout the season. There's loads of stuff I want to say, but if I say too much I'll steal some of my thunder from other 'Catching Up' posts I have planned. So let's try and stick to players still with the Nationals.

Adam Dunn is doing as well as I expected. It's just a terrible mistake to expect him to be a tolerable fielder at 1B. Gonzalez has defied confidence in his glove all year. I'm told Belliard is deceiving me with his good numbers. But, here we are, and there's little alternative to them.

When you think about what the Nationals have now, you'd have to say that overall their fielding is potentially worse than it was in the first half of the season, when it was bad enough. They consequences of various moves has been to upgrade the outfield, but to degrade the infield. Since the outfield was way below average, and the infield only a little bit below, I guess if you were paying the price in one place for an upgrade you'd do it like that. But they didn't. They dealt away better infielders and replaced them with weaker ones. The upgrade in the outfield came independently of the degraded infield.

Guzmán's improvement is their only sign that they might be saved from the potential disaster in the infield. Is he regressing to his true talent level? Or is this a misleading glimpse of sun during a perfect storm at sea? I'm putting my life jacket on, just to be safe.

The table is in order of innings played at the position, with the cut-off at 180 innings. The biggest moves, either up or down, in each of the three measures are in bold.

UZR converts fielding statistics into a +/- rating reflecting the number of runs saved or given away. There is a basic version, which is based on the number of innings played by the player, and a normalized version that assumes everybody plays 150 games. It also is forced to sum to zero, so a player can have his UZR adjusted even when he doesn't play.RZR is like a fielding 'batting average', dividing the number of plays made by the number of opportunities. Unlike old Zone Rating, it excludes plays made 'out of zone'. (Zone Rating divides the field into zones, and assigns responsibility among the players.) For comparative purposes, I've put at the end of each player's line the MLB average RZR for position.

What with one thing and another, including a flight back home to London for a month's visit, I've not been tracking the Nationals so closely as before. So, time to catch up on so many things.

Let's start with an observation I noted from last Wednesday's game against the Atlanta Braves. It really relates to Jim Riggleman. 'What a horrible job he was handed. The team was badly built to start and dogged by constant injuries to the starting rotation particularly...' Well, actually, that relates to his Mariners' experience, but it might sound eerily familiar. Tom Boswell, in a chat, had this to say about Riggleman and the lack of aggressive baserunning under Acta: 'But I think Jim wants to fiddle with the lineup, maybe try to use Morgan, Harris, Gonzalez and Guzman to have more of a running game, more hit-and-runs, which he likes.'

If you check that Baseball-Reference.com play-by-play, you'll see in the first inning that Nyjer Morgan was out stealing. He went on a 1-0 count to Guzmán. If the objective had been to get Morgan to second, the fact that Guzmán worked a 4-0 walk achieved the same goal, but by that time it was too late. Worse still, Zimmerman and Dunn both came up and singled, and the Nationals took a 1-0 lead. Except it would have been 2-0 had Riggleman not wanted to 'have more of a running game'.

Unlike the Acta-bashers of earlier this season, I'm not trying to show my contempt of Riggleman in making this point. I merely illustrate that small ball comes with costs, and philosophically some managers think their players make those risks unacceptable. What were the chances of Guzmán getting a walk? Actually, in the second half of the season much better than in the first. He's got 6 walks in 105 plate appearances already, against 7 walks in 323 in the first half.

I wish Riggleman well, but the Actaphobes and their small-ball fetish (and I use the word most precisely) can go to heck in a handbasket, because they are full of muck, for the most part.

Tuesday, 11 August 2009

I've been AWOL not only during the best run of play this season for the Washington Nationals, but also at a time when significant changes have occurred to the roster. It's partly because I've been blogging about cricket, but also tied in with work and an impending trip to London. Why does everything always happen at once?

Tuesday, 4 August 2009

This covers more than a week, owing to a delay caused by the SABR annual convention in Washington, D.C. The data is drawn from Fangraphs' Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) data and Revised Zone Rating (RZR) at The Hardball Times. I've put the biggest movers in each category in bold.

Not such a strong sign of a 'Riggleman effect' on the fielding after two weeks. For some reason, Dunn looks good in UZR but not so good in RZR. This probably has some connection with different structures to the zones in each. I still believe that it is a mistake to consider Dunn an acceptable Major-League 1B. He does less damage in LF. However, the Nationals are committed to finding out if I'm wrong. Belliard puts up some good numbers at 2B, but that belies the evidence of last year.

As things stand, the Nationals are liable to be giving away half a win over 150 games with the new alignment, and Hernandez at 2B, or gaining over half a win with Belliard at 2B. Hernandez, however, appears to be the better hitter.

The table is in order of innings played at the position, with the cut-off at 100 innings.

UZR converts fielding statistics into a +/- rating reflecting the number of runs saved or given away. There is a basic version, which is based on the number of innings played by the player, and a normalized version that assumes everybody plays 150 games. It also is forced to sum to zero, so a player can have his UZR adjusted even when he doesn't play.RZR is like a fielding 'batting average', dividing the number of plays made by the number of opportunities. Unlike old Zone Rating, it excludes plays made 'out of zone'. (Zone Rating divides the field into zones, and assigns responsibility among the players.) For comparative purposes, I've put at the end of each player's line the MLB average RZR for position.

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About fra paolo

He was a fan of the Montréal Expos, because they were the closest team to London, England, where he lived from 1982 until 2008. For now he lives in Ontario, from where he keeps an eye on the Detroit Tigers and other baseballing matters.

(The title alludes to St Augustine of Hippo's De Civitate Dei contra Paganos, in case theology isn't on your curriculum vitae.)

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Hero's Palms and Goat's Heads are awarded on the basis of the change in Win Probability during the pitcher's time on the mound, less any obvious fielding blunders.

LI Win Values (batters)

Data Incomplete.

(This metric, of my own invention, incorprates the Leverage Index, RE24 Base-Out values and the number of runs that are needed for a win to estimate how many wins or losses a hitter has provided to his team. One can think of it as a measure of 'clutch'.)